A lower climate impact is almost like a luxury item. Sure, a fancy expensive restaurant can afford to do this, and the best part for
them is that the whole thing can be sold as part of the dining experience.
That’s not exactly a solution to the dives and street food joints that couldn’t operate without some form of disposable containers or cutlery. And more importantly, that’s not a solution to the customers of those dives that can’t afford anything more expensive.
On the other hand, I imagine that a portion of waste reduction can simply be a change in habits and doesn’t necessarily cost anything.
I was once trying to explain this sort of idea to a climate change denying acquaintance. I said, forget the environment or the turtles, even if you don’t believe this is harming our environment, why are we using these devices designed to be immediately thrown away? Why do you need a straw with your water/soda but not with your beer? Where does that habit come from?
That’s something I’m trying to get at, the wealthy and/or upper middle class have the luxury of having time for that cognitive load of certain “conscientious” activities like that.
The upper middle class and wealthy who already harm the environment more by flying frequently or driving a brand new 25MPG Audi instead of a 40MPG 10 year old Nissan Versa aren’t going to save the planet by going to a zero-waste fancy restaurant, and they might be eating at that restaurant to alleviate their own guilt because they know they’re using more than their fair share in the first place.
For every one of them there’s 15 people working two jobs and eating at a fast food joint with disposable cutlery because there is no other option that fits their schedule or budget. But they might be less wasteful anyway because they don’t have the money to buy a few thousand pounds of jet fuel.
> For every one of them there’s 15 people working two jobs and eating at a fast food joint with disposable cutlery because there is no other option that fits their schedule or budget
Very US-centric though, people in most european countries eat at home.
People in the US eat at home too. Do you mean to suggest Europeans eat at home more often? I could believe there's a small difference, but although Europe might not be covered in fast food chains at the same rate as the US, I'd guess smaller eateries more than make up for that.
> driving a brand new 25MPG Audi instead of a 40MPG 10 year old Nissan Versa
I know this is not your substantive point but ...
The extent to which CAFE standards have improved mileage even over the past 10 years should not be ignored, and you should check your assumptions about fuel economy. e.g. 2020 Audi A4 gets basically the same combined mileage as the 2010 Nissan Versa.
That seems a cultural thing. In Spain disposable cutlery would be unthinkable except for McDonalds. Any menu-of-the-day cheap blue-collar bar will have real cutlery and fabric.
I find a lot of the bags and boxes I'm forced to use annoying. I buy one thing at the pharmacy and they print out a receipt that is sometimes 8 feet long (dead serious) and put it all in a bag that I would immediately throw away. I tell them I don't need the bag, but I'm still stuck with these ridiculous receipts full of coupons I don't care about. Purely from an annoyance standpoint, this bothers me a great deal.
I know the company/cashiers assume it's expected of them, but to me it's like the gallon sized drinks at fast food chains. It aggravates me that anyone thinks it's necessary.
The Amazon packing and boxing situation is a whole other level of annoying.
> People prefer grocery stores that provide bags rather than require they bring their own.
Definitely cultural, AFAIK most Europeans brings their own bags for groceries and it's just automatic. Otherwise you have to buy a new bag at check-out.
Disposable items (properly disposed of, ie landfilled) can be, and often are, more environmentally friendly than reusable items. Especially if you look at actual real life use, as opposed to projected or design use.
Look at a UK LCA of shopping bags:
A cotton tote needs to be reused ~173 times without being washed to break even with the efficiency of a single use HDPE bag. (Edit: other alternatives, like LDPE, paper or woven plastic, are also listed as low as multiplier of 2x vs HDPE. I didn't intend to mislead.)
If you're not doing a whole load of dishes, it can be more efficient to use plastic or paper plates for a meal, and trash them. The cost of just washing something can be relatively and unreasonably high, environmentally speaking.
The green movement has been over reliant on emotional programming (reuse = always good, plastic = always bad, etc) and needs to invest more in actual education. Landfills have gotten an especially unearned negative connotation.
Hopefully the new generation of college graduates are getting proper training in conducting proper Life Cycle Analysis'.
Not saying reuse is always bad or that we shouldn't be analysing these things, just that they need analysis, and not a collective gut reaction.
Banning single use plastic bags is more about reducing litter and water contamination than about energy efficiency. Lightweight plastic bags are particularly bad because the wind blows them everywhere and they often end up in oceans or rivers. This causes serious harm to aquatic environments.
Yes, and that's fine, but it's also somewhat a different problem. One that is better solved with a deposit scheme, redesign, or some other method than tax and ban. (Edit: or the obvious- using biodegradable additives in HDPE at a marginal cost.)
Make them twice as thick. Melt a weight into the seam of each one to prevent flying and floating. You'd still be a magnitude ahead of the alternatives. There are alternatives besides banning.
They have their problems, but people don't realize what a damn miracle of engineering HDPE bags are. And other disposable paper and plastic items, to a lesser extent.
I disagree that it's a different problem. There's a branch of corporate environmentalism that says, hey, look, green things are great when they reduce costs. LEED certified buildings reduce energy costs, for example, so everyone is down for building and occupying them. It's great, because it's a win win, but it's not at all the whole story.
Plastic bags in the ocean are an externality, whose cost is hard to measure but is paid in the lives of wild things. The whole point of externalities is that people aren't bearing any cost for them: tax and/or ban is absolutely a reasonable approach to handling them, since it makes people take literal account of the literal downstream effects.
One more thing, on edit: the analysis you're calling for is good to do, but is also prone to the "seeing like a state" problem. The analysis will only include what can be easily measured... Which can leave out a lot of the story.
LCA's are only as good as the person who performs them. But we'd be much better off if everyone at least knew what they were, and what they try to accomplish, specifically capturing all of those externalities.
Re: the tax and ban... Tires and lead batteries in most states in the US is good example of this. You can tax or ban or regulate to put a cap on the problem. But if you want to collect the existing waste already out there, an incentive refund accomplishes much more, in less time.
Sure. That's the point. There are lots of variables that all need to be looked at and evaluated to find the sweet spots. It's why LCA's should be done for every option, including a ban. Identify what variable(s) are the low fruit to go after.
I think the bag bans are more about the litter clogging up sewers, trees, streets, and breaking down into microplastics outside. I also think your number is cherry picked.
Here in the states, most grocery stores sell woven poly polypropylene, LDPE resusable bags, not cotton totes. The study you cite says it only takes 4 reuses of an LDPE bag to beat a single use plastic bag, and 11 for the woven PPE kind, an order of magnitude better than cotton. That's only a month or two of grocery trips, and they last for years. I know I've reused the same ones for the past decade.
Yes, litter is a problem. But in the same article, note the impact for HDPE with a biodegradable additive for a marginal cost. Just saying there are many options, that's all.
Yes, I picked cotton because it's considered the luxury choice (given the context) and usually the one sold as the most environmentally friendly. Ie non bleached, organic, sustainably sourced etc that you don't usually see with plastic alternatives. (I did mean to make a point, but not mislead.)
Which is kinda my point... Plastics can fill a proper need and still be the most "green" choice. Same with paper or any "disposable".
But back to HDPE... Most people even reuse these at least once at home. And ignoring that, the nearest competitor is still twice the impact.
I'm not saying alternatives are bad, just that people need to be open to the fact that sometimes the unexpected alternative can be best.
And conversely, the "green" luxury alternative might actually be worst.
They're at least as popular where I am as the LDPE or woven plastic options; at least at Whole Foods type stores. But I didn't intend to mislead.
Besides my point is more that plastics have an appropriate place in the environmental scheme of things. Whether you treat them as disposable or reusable.
The plastic bag issue was a particularly conspicuous source of litter, somehow. They tended to blow away and get caught in trees and bushes. The 5p tax has cleaned up the visual environment quite dramatically, just as vaping has put a big dent in the cigarette litter.
It's certainly a problem and I don't mean to minimize it.
If you look at numbers, it's also enormously better here than in Asia. Like all of Europe and America are responsible for less than 5% of worldwide river/ocean litter.
Part of the problem is us (western society) shipping bulk "recyclables" overseas, which then get picked through for valuables, and the rest is often left out to be picked up by the next wind or rain.
One of the best things we could do for world wide river ocean litter pollution, is to just landfill low value recyclables domestically, instead of shipping then overseas. (Edit: or at least recycle them domestically, or with a trusted, regulated country)
Also applies somewhat to air quality with burning plastic for electricity.
> The cost of just washing something can be relatively and unreasonably high, environmentally speaking.
We have a break room with a sink, reusable dinnerware, and disposable dinnerware. I cringed when I saw people washing a reusable plate in the sink. We're in Southern California. There's no way in which it is better for the environment to use gallons of water in order to keep a paper plate and a plastic fork out of the landfill.
Too often people take Reduce/Reuse/Recycle to heart without taking a broader view of all the resources that they are consuming.
Good point about landfills, they serve as carbon sinks when plastics make it there.
173 is less than 4 years if you shop groceries once a week or so, I already used mine longer than that (aside from a couple that I lost). Never washed them either. They can last another 10 years I think, unless they are lost.
Those bags are bad idea for random shopping, but they work well enough for regular trips. Just keep them in the car.
I expect people waste more cotton on socks and t-shirts, but that's neither here not there.
I bought canvas bags at a local food coop back in 1994. I use them at least 2-4 times per week. I wash them every other year. 25 years later they are still going strong, some 4000+ uses. Plus they are biodegradable compare to plastic bags.
They are way sturdier then the ones sold now. To replicate them I’d have to make them myself or look on etsy.
> Sure, a fancy expensive restaurant can afford to do this
Looks like a pretty humble vegetarian bistro to me? Far from fancy.
And I would have thought someone best places to have a huge impact here might be someone like McDonalds, with their supplier clout they could force suppliers to meet high standards and with their scale it could have a huge impact.
The state doesn't have to tell you how, just to mandate it. See pollution standards where the point isn't to come up with a technical solution but with a measurable expectation.
Setting aside the philosophical question around whether government should be compelling businesses to make these sort of changes, change has to come at all levels, from personal to organizational to government, and businesses can implement change with much more immediacy than government can.
E.g., McDonald's shifting to cage-free hens for egg purchases. Regardless of the reasons, that was expected to have a huge impact on egg farming.
> government should be compelling businesses to make these sort of changes
That's exactly what governments do all the time. Every regulation on food safety, or pollution standards, etc. came from them. Because left to their own devices most businesses would settle on the same "maximize profits regardless of consequences" path.
P.S. Well you can "ask/demand" anything. But with no authority the process would be painfully slow, if even moving at all. Voting with the wallet works only when we have many good alternatives, which we usually don't.
This doesn't fall under philosophy. Businesses have financial incentives to not make environmentally friendly changes. They do have some marketing incentives to change, but that has proven itself solvable via greenwashing. If you wait for a for-profit organization to become socially aware, when their financial incentives are not aligned, you'll be waiting a long time.
Humble? Look at the menu. The cheapest glass of wine is $12. $13 cocktails, $20+ small plates, $15 cheese board for one. It’s not a vegetarian restaurant, either.
I know this isn’t New York Expensive but it’s not working class food, either.
Homemade pickles and preserves are undoubtedly fancy these days. They were only working-class foods when the working-class had to make them to have food throughout the year. Which was admittedly most of history, but the present is not the past.
Restaurant prices are based on the cost of real estate. Cheaper places assume more tables per square foot and more turns per table. Prices are based on average spend per cover.
$12 glasses of wine seems more than reasonable for NYC, especially since natural wine often comes in at a higher cost than mass produced wine.
...a portion of waste reduction can simply be a change in habits and doesn’t necessarily cost anything.
My father had a restaurant long ago. He hired a professional and prestigious cooker (the the title "chef" was not so common then) and the first thing he noticed is that everything was used.
There were a thousand tricks to plan the menus so meat not served were reused for broth and so on.
This is the old way of cooking - waste means you have to go pull it out of the fields or kill it yourself.
Honestly, its a sign of a great (and often family or locally run) restaurant when I see they are rolling their menu into the next day in a circumspect way - its a sign to me that they understand their menu very well and know the best ways to present it.
Being a luxury isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There’s some cost to being a trailblazer, but it opens the trail for others to follow.
In this case, being able to pick and choose suppliers who can accommodate their needs is a luxury, but once the suppliers are tooled for that, it’s easier for others with less clout to follow.
A lot of changes are chicken and egg scenarios, where the market can’t move without the supply chain, and the supply chain can’t move without the demand. If someone has the means to kickstart that, more power to them. For example, 10 years ago smartphones were a luxury - now I know homeless people who use them to access public services. And I don’t see how we could have got to this point, without starting at “luxury”.
> That’s not exactly a solution to the dives and street food joints that couldn’t operate without some form of disposable containers or cutlery. And more importantly, that’s not a solution to the customers of those dives that can’t afford anything more expensive.
Street vendors could dispense into your container or charge you for a disposable one.
>A lower climate impact is almost like a luxury item.
Only from the perspective of a citizen of a wealthy country trapped in a mindset of consumerism. Inhabitants of wealthy countries on average consume multiples of what inhabitants of poorer countries do.¹ The easiest way to lower your climate impact is to simply consume less. This doesn't cost anything, and in fact saves you money.
You generally don't have ice in your beer. Because ice makes beer gross (I'd like to find the scientific reason why, but it just does). Soda and water are typically served with ice, and it is difficult to drink it without a straw. Especially crushed ice.
Now if you had a lid on the cup similar to car coffee mugs (where the top is indented with a small hole for the liquid to flow through), then that could be a solution for the straws.
Overweight people are more likely to gain weight without leftover. I wonder the health influence and environment issue, which is bigger. The food are disposable anyway, it’s the plastics electronics that matter
How do you contend that overweight people are going to gain weight by not having leftovers?
The article did not suggest that the restaurant forces people to eat everything on their plates. They just compost whatever food is left behind and don't throw it away.
People have sent me this link because I've reduced my food packaging to filling less than one load of trash per year (which I blog about http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2) and my diet has become more delicious, cheaper, more social, healthier, and more accessible for people in food deserts, who have invited me to help them cook this way.
People also keep suggesting I start a restaurant since the food tastes so good and is so easy to make. I'm waiting to meet the right person with experience starting restaurants.
I'm posting because while everyone who knows the numbers considers the amount of food waste and packaging we create unconscionable, what I don't think people realize is that what the food industry purports to solve -- that industrial food is more convenient or tastes more appealing -- is all wrong compared to once you learn to cook. Then from scratch is faster, cheaper, more delicious, more convenient. The backbone of industrial food is ignorance and lack of skill. In places with tons of fast food restaurants but no farmers markets or fresh produce, the best solution is more cooking from scratch to teach people to demand fresh. The transition is hard, but doable and a great project for enterprising people who want to help people improve their lives and communities. I find it tremendously rewarding.
Read your blog post and there are 2 remarks I'd like to make:
> You just go to the store, buy food without packaging, and don’t buy food with packaging.
This is kind of a truism and a circular reference. You avoid food packaging by not buying food with packaging. I don't have the option of buying any fluid dairy product (or anything fluid more or less) in anything but a carton or plastic bottle/cup. And that's just an example, many other items simply don't come in a non-packaged form, or it's lower quality when bought in bulk, even if it's cheaper. If it's cheaper and better I think it's a no-brainer that people would go for it.
> the farm I get most of my summer and fall vegetables from [...] how much more flavor they have than what stores sell
It's great if you have this option of buying from a farm but it's not a sustainable one for most. In the countries that could make the biggest difference with food packaging very few have no access to such a farm. And the supply of "wholesome, farm grown, bio" food is limited. Either the price would skyrocket due to the huge demand, or they would be less "wholesome" and more "supermarket".
It's the same as when you hear that "everybody should buy second had stuff because it helps the environment and it's cheaper". There's a bit of hidden paradox in there.
I get butter, cheese, and sour cream at a local zero waste shop. We don't use dairy milk though, just nut milk and oat milk where we buy the nuts and oats in bulk and blend with water.
The point was to get rid of packaging entirely, not just replace plastic packaging with paper or glass. I can't really see how I can hygienically procure and transport many basic food products and types without packaging.
This being said I think using and reusing more durable packaging should be the way forward. Glass in particular is one type that can be reused instead of recycled. I grew up with glass bottles (unbranded 0.5l and 1l) being reused and you'd trade an empty one in to get a full one. Most of the liquid stuff we had around the house was stored in these identical glass bottles instead of 100 different sizes and shapes of bottles.
I mean, I just bring some bags to the store and fill them up! And bottles for laundry detergent, oils, etc. Several of these zero waste shops opened in my city (an eastern European capital) the past couple of years.
This is infeasible across the entire supply chain lifecycle. IMHO what is more realistic and feasible is putting an end to our packaging winding up in our landfills, and instead using energy maintaining durable and recyclable packaging. Accounting for the trillions spent on a military umbrella over oil regions and transport modes, the total energy and monetary cost switching to a zero-landfill packaging model would be a lower footprint.
I prefer glass containers with standardized composition, and ground glass joint stopper lids; for larger containers that cannot be held in a circular format that ground glass joints seem to require, I use glass rectangular containers with plastic lids (switching over to glass/stainless with silicone lids when my current containers break, as such options weren't available back when I originally purchased them).
The containers can be any shape, but as long as the type of glass is uniform, they are infinitely recyclable and cheap and easy to re-process (bonus if we use solar thermal-based processes to re-melt the broken glass). There is a one-time shipping cost to obtain the container that is much more expensive than throwaway-thin plastic containers, but it can be refilled endlessly until it breaks by accident; thick, removable neoprene skins can reduce breakage frequency by supplying a more non-slip surface to handle and offering some protection against minor bumps.
The supply chain reconfiguration is a bigger problem, though. Very few zero-waste stores have switched to receiving goods in Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC). These are cost-efficient to transport because 18 standard 1000l IBC fit in a standard 20 ft. ISO container, and 2 special 820l IBC's can fit in the leftover space in that ISO container. Short of sending the goods in a dedicated ISO container (which only the largest distribution centers could afford to tie up capital in), it is the closest I can think of a large retail location being able to support, and even that is a stretch for some of the smaller stores.
Even so, very few manufacturers will distribute in IBC's. For example, I corresponded by email with Dr. Bronner's, and the largest size they will ship is a 5 gallon carboy they won't refill.
Then there are challenges with refill and re-supply, as well as ensuring the IBC's are made entirely of infinitely recyclable components. We can use stainless steel IBC's, but they're extraordinarily expensive. With many products, filling into customer-supplied containers raises sanitation challenges to resolve.
Another challenge I see is re-configuring the supply chain and consumer behavior will not lead to most of the savings passed onto consumers. That will stillborn any other similar environmentally-friendly but change-intensive infrastructure initiatives we badly need.
If we get to completely-automated fulfillment centers and delivery, then we might be able to solve the sanitation challenges with automated cleaning and disinfection (though that might take upwards of three hours with a cleaning process that follows prion-contamination protocols).
I'm starting at the consumer-end with glass containers and bulk products for now. I cringe when I see the bulk products come in throwaway plastic bags in usually-throwaway cardboard boxes. Baby steps first.
My grocery store sells milk from a local dairy in glass bottles with a bottle return program ($1-2 deposit on the bottles depending on size). The only waste is the plastic cap on top. Returning the bottles is a mild inconvenience.
Obviously (and unfortunately) this is not available everywhere.
Our largest local dairy runs retail stores and sold their milk this way too (although they used heavy reusable plastic bottles rather than glass). It was awesome.
Sadly, they stopped doing that a number of years ago, and now just use the standard disposable plastic jugs.
She's one of my role models. Sorry I forget which videos cover dairy specifically, but I remember her talking about cheese and her secrets to get workers to put it in containers she brought. I think meat too.
My local stores don’t even have scales at the cash. You/someguy weigh items in-store and put a label on a closed package. Expensive items (e.g. seasonal shortages of premium) go prepackaged.
That’s interesting. My grandma (who is also a self-growing plantation lady) always complains that store tomatoes are tasteless. But that is offset by the price. She works all day growing them, and stores try to sell good vegetables sometimes, but prices are putting buyers off. “Chinese chemical synthetics” are much cheaper and affordable. I tried to calculate, out of pure scientific interest, and with my income I could not allocate enough time to not get serious net negative, even if was interested in shoveling and taste. Maybe it’s a local thing.
How much time and money do you spend on growing these?
I've lived in some places where you can find local-farmer markets, where you can get high quality locally sourced vegetables, fruit, diary, eggs, fish, etc. In some places they're cheaper than store-bought, in others they're competitively priced or more expensive. My point being that you don't always have to choose between the extremes of storebought v. self-grown.
Part of my family participates in a local collective that buys local produce directly from producers in bulk, and in such a way they get cheap produce and can offer good prices to producers (because the middle-man is cut out). You might have something like that where you live.
Migrant labor, agricultural subsidies, petro-chemical subsidies, and transportation subsidies (socialized roads) have resulted in the current state of affairs.
The rural poor in the US still grow much of their own food. Even the not-so-poor. City dwellers need this super cheap, industrialized food, not the rest of us.
I grow my tomatoes and it is definitely not effortless. You need to plant the seeds in little pots, keep them in a sunlit but protected area, plant and support them, water them regularly. You also need a patch of land. None of that is a big deal, but considering how cheap commercial tomatoes are, it doesn't make economic sense for most people.
Another thing to consider is that tomatoes are seasonal. You won't have more than 3 months of natural homegrown tomatoes a year.
Is it worth it? IMHO, totally. Tomatoes are one of these products where homegrown is much better than the usual commercial varieties. But if all you want are good tomatoes, and don't enjoy the process, there are probably other, more economical ways of getting them.
I wouldn’t call that effortless, unless you already have a piece of land, live there and don’t need to go to the city for prolonged times. E.g. for me that would mean owning a car* , renting a parking lot at workplace, owning some land, paying for a greenhouse (idk maybe tomatoes do not need one, but in general gh counts as a taxable building here). And of course paying/shoveling the dirt. It is not effortless at all, unless there are prerequisites.
No idea why my question made few people upset, since I’m not against homegrown things and only explained how it all doesn’t work locally and interested in economics of those for whom it works.
* blasphemy for US folks, I know, but pretty valid option to not have one in my downtown; everything is cheap to rent and very close to each other.
If you're near Manhattan, contact me and invite yourself over. I host about 20 lunches and dinners a month, partly to share how to do it. I've also done corporate events, for example last Earth Day at Lululemon's flagship store on 5th Avenue.
One very simple thing people can do that costs no money and they can keep buying exactly the same products they do now -- just less of it -- is stop overeating.
In my experience, people who talk like this will gush about how a handful of seeds or a kale salad is more delicious than a cheeseburger or a burrito, which of course taste unnatural and disgusting. It's like talking to a breatharian
> People also keep suggesting I start a restaurant since the food tastes so good and is so easy to make. I'm waiting to meet the right person with experience starting restaurants.
I know a couple of successful restaurateurs in my area. It's an incredibly difficult business to be in. I would suggest that nobody opens a restaurant unless it's truly their love.
The description seems a bis disingenuous. There are are plenty of leftovers they just don't end up in a classic trash bin. I was hoping to read how they developed a method to serve perfectly sized portions or continuously adjust the size so there's no food thrown away. It's probably a holy grail in the restaurant industry.
In reality could operate without any trash pickup translates to compostable waste is composted, non-compostable waste is recycled, other waste is donated. Recycle and compost. Which is great but not really "no leftovers". Is recycling paper worse than composting it? Recycling glass worse than reusing it?
> a dishwashing setup that converts salt into soap
I have to admit I don't understand this one. Converting salt into soap? Are they talking about actual saponification of fats from leftover food or something else?
Before getting to the "perfect size portion", US restaurants can start by cutting the portion size in half. Really, you guys servings size are really crazy.
Maybe offer free refill for customers really hungry (AFTER they're done with their initial serving).
Maybe it depends where one eats. I hear people saying this and I eat out all over the US and Europe and I guess I don't see this large and systematic difference in portion sizes that people claim--especially of the main/protein ingredient.
this is key insight - large portions tend to be mostly massive quantities of cheap carbs like rice and potatoes. the expensive proteins tend to be very "sensible" portions lol.
Most restaurants I've been to (in the US) serve me approximately twice as much food as a actually want. It's so wasteful, as it means that I'm throwing away half of the food each time.
i might be confused, but are you suggesting ala carte restaurants all convert to some form of AYCE system? or would it be a single free refill for the REALLY HUNGRY? cause i'm a big boy and can eat quite a bit, but more so than that, i'm a HUGE value guy. if you tell me i pay the same price and get two plates of food IF i'm hungry versus one plate if i'm not, you better bet i'm only going when i'm hungry and can eat two plates.
i honestly don't see how anyone can possibly see your suggestion as a sensible one. by the way, if you cut my portion size in half, you better cut the price in half too, otherwise i'm not coming back. i'm going to that NEW restaurant across the street who offers what you used to. i love big portions because i can bring leftovers home - i don't care that other people who cannot control their appetites finish the whole plate instead and get obese, that's their own problem not mine.
>if you cut my portion size in half, you better cut the price in half too,
Nah, they just need to shave $1 off and call it tapas. :-)
I'm being mildly snarky. I like tapas for the variety. But, in part, because they mostly don't have the relative filler you have in a typical big dish main, they tend to be relatively pricey.
Look at it the other way around... maybe they could have "half portion" options for those of us who would be tossing the extra food in the trash.
I'd take that every time -- even if I were charged the same as the full portion (since it doesn't matter in the end, as I'm throwing half of the full portion away anyhow.)
Been giving this some thought too. Because my plastic output on food is completely unreasonable. Basically every meal equals 2-3 plastic containers because its all single portions salad etc
I could hit the local market. But that would mean sacrificing lunch hour to go shopping (market hours =biz hours)
You should try to shop ahead of time and prepare food at home to bring to work. You can even save time if you follow the "meal prep Sunday" model of making the week's food all at once.
I don't know if this would work for you, but here's how I do my food shopping...
For things that are relatively nonperishable (shelf life of a month or so), I do a single massive shopping trip every month. Then I have an entire month that I don't have to to that.
For the things that have a shorter shelf life (produce, dairy, etc.), I buy on an as-needed basis. This typically means I stop by a store every other day on my way home from work -- but since I'm just buying what I need for a day or two, that shopping trip is very brief.
So they're composting and recycling? The city I live in mandates all restaurants in the downtown core do this... (Of course we also have one of the largest composting facilities in North America)
I wish that more restaurants would dial back their portion sizes to something that isn't insane.
I am seeing that more and more, and that's a good thing, but the odds are still good that I'll be served more food than most people can eat in a sitting, and I always feel bad when I see so much leftover food heading for the trash.
I’ve always kind of wondered how it’s even legal for a restaurant to have menu items that go over 2k calories a serving. Even some marketing healthy restaurants can push 1500 easily.
Calories are not unhealthy. You just need to match your average intake with what you burn.
2k calories isn't even that much if you are a big, active man. And even if you aren't, as long as you don't eat that every meal, that's fine.
There is no reason to ban large servings, but what could be done is to make smaller, cheaper options mandatory, especially for products that can't be taken home easily (ex: ice cream).
not sure where you're from, but i LOVE huge portions in restaurants because that means i have leftovers to take home for the next day. do most people not do that?
I don't know. I don't do that, though. Mostly because if I'm eating out, it's usually a prelude to night doing other things -- and the last thing I want to do is have to cart around a bag of food.
Also, I used to routinely take leftovers home. It was a habit my parents had, and I just did it unquestioningly. Then one day I noticed that I rarely actually ate the leftovers (they tend to not be terrific the next day) and would throw them away anyhow.
seriously? like, even if i'm heading out after dinner, i just leave the leftover box in the car. if it goes bad, then it goes bad, if it doesn't, great! lunch for next day.
and not sure how your food goes bad, if it's good in the restaurant... usually food doesn't go bad so quickly, but maybe you are one of those people who have some irrational aversion to leftovers (nothing wrong with that, my girlfriend is like that too) even though it's perfectly fine. right now i'm literally having reheated leftover pasta from a fine dining restaurant dinner last night, and i'm thoroughly enjoying it.
Food shouldn't be left out unrefrigerated for more than 2 hours, is the USDA's recommendation, otherwise the bacteria can multiply to dangerous levels. Even if you eat it later and don't get sick, it doesn't mean it wasn't a risky thing you did.
So people that go out to eat then go out and do other things that night before going home, unless it's the middle of winter and the car is basically a refrigerator itself, probably shouldn't bother bringing leftovers home with them.
If you're going to eat it, you've got up to 4 hours. Two hours is the time to get it out of the danger zone if you're going to leave it in the fridge. But if you're going to eat it rather than store it, the guidelines are more lenient.
Food safety is a lot more complicated than time and temperature. Guidelines like the USDA's are simplified and overzealous to the point of harm IMO. Leftover pasta in tomato sauce in a takeout container in a car overnight has probably never made anyone sick. Pasta in cream sauce might spoil, but again probably perfectly safe from the standpoint of pathogens. Meanwhile, a raw lettuce salad stands a reasonable chance of making you sick even if always stored according to the guidelines.
Take "fully loaded nachos" as an example. After a few hours, the chips are really soggy and gross. And a good steak, rare to rare++ (or even medium rare) is delicious when it first hits your plate. But once it cools down, and you reheat it at home it is completely different (you end up not getting it warm enough, or it gets overcooked).
I have the same issue when using home-cooked food as leftovers for lunch the next day. Cube steaks are rarely good warmed over (they dry out), rice ends up losing its stickiness (so it is a wet mess, or dried out crumbs). About the only thing that I can use for lunch the next day is some pasta based dishes, pizza (depending -- again, deep dish goes gross after a few hours), and manwich or tacos is good the next day (gotta keep the meat separated from everything else so it is easier to warm up in the microwave).
> not sure how your food goes bad, if it's good in the restaurant... usually food doesn't go bad so quickly,
It's not that it goes bad, it's that it's not as good reheated the next day as something that I could just cook up myself, so I'll cook.
This depends a lot on what the dish is, though. Some dishes are OK the next day, but most aren't.
> but maybe you are one of those people who have some irrational aversion to leftovers
No, I have no aversion to leftovers in general, but again, it depends a lot on what the dish is. When I cook at home, I arrange my meal plan so that I can use any leftovers from one meal as an ingredient in the next day's meal.
Yeah, I'm not opposed to taking leftovers home if it's something I would eat the next day (like Chinese a lot of the time). But most of my leftovers are usually piles of carbs that I'm unlikely to bother with.
In any case, most of my restaurant eating is while I'm traveling so I'm mostly not able or not interested to do anything with leftovers.
Here I am thinking this article would be about a restaurant reusing the food they haven't sold to help solve the problem of food waste.
Instead the problem being solved is packaging waste, and they solve it by putting the onus on their vendors (bakers, butchers, etc) to deliver in reusable containers.
Commendable, but isn't the larger problem the amount of food being wasted by kitchen across the country? Sure, they compost any left over food that can be processed, but that food could have fed hungry communities.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadThat’s not exactly a solution to the dives and street food joints that couldn’t operate without some form of disposable containers or cutlery. And more importantly, that’s not a solution to the customers of those dives that can’t afford anything more expensive.
On the other hand, I imagine that a portion of waste reduction can simply be a change in habits and doesn’t necessarily cost anything.
I was once trying to explain this sort of idea to a climate change denying acquaintance. I said, forget the environment or the turtles, even if you don’t believe this is harming our environment, why are we using these devices designed to be immediately thrown away? Why do you need a straw with your water/soda but not with your beer? Where does that habit come from?
I mean, the answer is pretty easy: people have a strong preference for options that help reduce their cognitive load.
People prefer restaurants that provide take out containers rather than require they bring Tupperware.
People prefer grocery stores that provide bags rather than require they bring their own.
This isn't true of everyone - conscientiousness is normally distributed - but it is true for most people most of the time.
The upper middle class and wealthy who already harm the environment more by flying frequently or driving a brand new 25MPG Audi instead of a 40MPG 10 year old Nissan Versa aren’t going to save the planet by going to a zero-waste fancy restaurant, and they might be eating at that restaurant to alleviate their own guilt because they know they’re using more than their fair share in the first place.
For every one of them there’s 15 people working two jobs and eating at a fast food joint with disposable cutlery because there is no other option that fits their schedule or budget. But they might be less wasteful anyway because they don’t have the money to buy a few thousand pounds of jet fuel.
Very US-centric though, people in most european countries eat at home.
OTOH I have some US friends who I am not even sure know how to cook
I'm in the US, and 95% of the time, I cook my own food and eat it at home. So does nearly everyone I know.
I know this is not your substantive point but ...
The extent to which CAFE standards have improved mileage even over the past 10 years should not be ignored, and you should check your assumptions about fuel economy. e.g. 2020 Audi A4 gets basically the same combined mileage as the 2010 Nissan Versa.
https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=29866&id=4...
I know the company/cashiers assume it's expected of them, but to me it's like the gallon sized drinks at fast food chains. It aggravates me that anyone thinks it's necessary.
The Amazon packing and boxing situation is a whole other level of annoying.
Definitely cultural, AFAIK most Europeans brings their own bags for groceries and it's just automatic. Otherwise you have to buy a new bag at check-out.
Make people pay for their waste, usually it helps reducing them.
Disposable items (properly disposed of, ie landfilled) can be, and often are, more environmentally friendly than reusable items. Especially if you look at actual real life use, as opposed to projected or design use.
Look at a UK LCA of shopping bags:
A cotton tote needs to be reused ~173 times without being washed to break even with the efficiency of a single use HDPE bag. (Edit: other alternatives, like LDPE, paper or woven plastic, are also listed as low as multiplier of 2x vs HDPE. I didn't intend to mislead.)
If you're not doing a whole load of dishes, it can be more efficient to use plastic or paper plates for a meal, and trash them. The cost of just washing something can be relatively and unreasonably high, environmentally speaking.
The green movement has been over reliant on emotional programming (reuse = always good, plastic = always bad, etc) and needs to invest more in actual education. Landfills have gotten an especially unearned negative connotation.
Hopefully the new generation of college graduates are getting proper training in conducting proper Life Cycle Analysis'.
Not saying reuse is always bad or that we shouldn't be analysing these things, just that they need analysis, and not a collective gut reaction.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
Make them twice as thick. Melt a weight into the seam of each one to prevent flying and floating. You'd still be a magnitude ahead of the alternatives. There are alternatives besides banning.
They have their problems, but people don't realize what a damn miracle of engineering HDPE bags are. And other disposable paper and plastic items, to a lesser extent.
Ocado will pay 5p per bag, even other supermarkets' bags.
Plastic bags in the ocean are an externality, whose cost is hard to measure but is paid in the lives of wild things. The whole point of externalities is that people aren't bearing any cost for them: tax and/or ban is absolutely a reasonable approach to handling them, since it makes people take literal account of the literal downstream effects.
One more thing, on edit: the analysis you're calling for is good to do, but is also prone to the "seeing like a state" problem. The analysis will only include what can be easily measured... Which can leave out a lot of the story.
Re: the tax and ban... Tires and lead batteries in most states in the US is good example of this. You can tax or ban or regulate to put a cap on the problem. But if you want to collect the existing waste already out there, an incentive refund accomplishes much more, in less time.
Well, now a palette of them weighs 2-10 times as much and the energy required to ship them needs to be recalculated.
Here in the states, most grocery stores sell woven poly polypropylene, LDPE resusable bags, not cotton totes. The study you cite says it only takes 4 reuses of an LDPE bag to beat a single use plastic bag, and 11 for the woven PPE kind, an order of magnitude better than cotton. That's only a month or two of grocery trips, and they last for years. I know I've reused the same ones for the past decade.
Yes, I picked cotton because it's considered the luxury choice (given the context) and usually the one sold as the most environmentally friendly. Ie non bleached, organic, sustainably sourced etc that you don't usually see with plastic alternatives. (I did mean to make a point, but not mislead.)
Which is kinda my point... Plastics can fill a proper need and still be the most "green" choice. Same with paper or any "disposable".
But back to HDPE... Most people even reuse these at least once at home. And ignoring that, the nearest competitor is still twice the impact.
I'm not saying alternatives are bad, just that people need to be open to the fact that sometimes the unexpected alternative can be best.
And conversely, the "green" luxury alternative might actually be worst.
Cotton bags are completely irrelevant but are often cherrypicked by those with an agenda to push.
Besides my point is more that plastics have an appropriate place in the environmental scheme of things. Whether you treat them as disposable or reusable.
If you look at numbers, it's also enormously better here than in Asia. Like all of Europe and America are responsible for less than 5% of worldwide river/ocean litter.
Part of the problem is us (western society) shipping bulk "recyclables" overseas, which then get picked through for valuables, and the rest is often left out to be picked up by the next wind or rain.
One of the best things we could do for world wide river ocean litter pollution, is to just landfill low value recyclables domestically, instead of shipping then overseas. (Edit: or at least recycle them domestically, or with a trusted, regulated country)
Also applies somewhat to air quality with burning plastic for electricity.
We have a break room with a sink, reusable dinnerware, and disposable dinnerware. I cringed when I saw people washing a reusable plate in the sink. We're in Southern California. There's no way in which it is better for the environment to use gallons of water in order to keep a paper plate and a plastic fork out of the landfill.
Too often people take Reduce/Reuse/Recycle to heart without taking a broader view of all the resources that they are consuming.
173 is less than 4 years if you shop groceries once a week or so, I already used mine longer than that (aside from a couple that I lost). Never washed them either. They can last another 10 years I think, unless they are lost.
Those bags are bad idea for random shopping, but they work well enough for regular trips. Just keep them in the car.
I expect people waste more cotton on socks and t-shirts, but that's neither here not there.
They are way sturdier then the ones sold now. To replicate them I’d have to make them myself or look on etsy.
Looks like a pretty humble vegetarian bistro to me? Far from fancy.
And I would have thought someone best places to have a huge impact here might be someone like McDonalds, with their supplier clout they could force suppliers to meet high standards and with their scale it could have a huge impact.
E.g., McDonald's shifting to cage-free hens for egg purchases. Regardless of the reasons, that was expected to have a huge impact on egg farming.
That's exactly what governments do all the time. Every regulation on food safety, or pollution standards, etc. came from them. Because left to their own devices most businesses would settle on the same "maximize profits regardless of consequences" path.
P.S. Well you can "ask/demand" anything. But with no authority the process would be painfully slow, if even moving at all. Voting with the wallet works only when we have many good alternatives, which we usually don't.
I know this isn’t New York Expensive but it’s not working class food, either.
Seems exactly like simple working-class food to me - preserved fish and vegetables, pickled eggs, pies, breads.
If a pickled egg if your idea of fancy then I'm perplexed.
$12 glasses of wine seems more than reasonable for NYC, especially since natural wine often comes in at a higher cost than mass produced wine.
My father had a restaurant long ago. He hired a professional and prestigious cooker (the the title "chef" was not so common then) and the first thing he noticed is that everything was used.
There were a thousand tricks to plan the menus so meat not served were reused for broth and so on.
Honestly, its a sign of a great (and often family or locally run) restaurant when I see they are rolling their menu into the next day in a circumspect way - its a sign to me that they understand their menu very well and know the best ways to present it.
In this case, being able to pick and choose suppliers who can accommodate their needs is a luxury, but once the suppliers are tooled for that, it’s easier for others with less clout to follow.
A lot of changes are chicken and egg scenarios, where the market can’t move without the supply chain, and the supply chain can’t move without the demand. If someone has the means to kickstart that, more power to them. For example, 10 years ago smartphones were a luxury - now I know homeless people who use them to access public services. And I don’t see how we could have got to this point, without starting at “luxury”.
Street vendors could dispense into your container or charge you for a disposable one.
Zero waste is impractical. But having a zero waste restaurant showcases possible solutions for more practical waste reduction.
Only from the perspective of a citizen of a wealthy country trapped in a mindset of consumerism. Inhabitants of wealthy countries on average consume multiples of what inhabitants of poorer countries do.¹ The easiest way to lower your climate impact is to simply consume less. This doesn't cost anything, and in fact saves you money.
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Now if you had a lid on the cup similar to car coffee mugs (where the top is indented with a small hole for the liquid to flow through), then that could be a solution for the straws.
The article did not suggest that the restaurant forces people to eat everything on their plates. They just compost whatever food is left behind and don't throw it away.
The article isn’t really about leftovers from portion sizes - it’s more about suppliers and packaging.
People also keep suggesting I start a restaurant since the food tastes so good and is so easy to make. I'm waiting to meet the right person with experience starting restaurants.
I'm posting because while everyone who knows the numbers considers the amount of food waste and packaging we create unconscionable, what I don't think people realize is that what the food industry purports to solve -- that industrial food is more convenient or tastes more appealing -- is all wrong compared to once you learn to cook. Then from scratch is faster, cheaper, more delicious, more convenient. The backbone of industrial food is ignorance and lack of skill. In places with tons of fast food restaurants but no farmers markets or fresh produce, the best solution is more cooking from scratch to teach people to demand fresh. The transition is hard, but doable and a great project for enterprising people who want to help people improve their lives and communities. I find it tremendously rewarding.
> You just go to the store, buy food without packaging, and don’t buy food with packaging.
This is kind of a truism and a circular reference. You avoid food packaging by not buying food with packaging. I don't have the option of buying any fluid dairy product (or anything fluid more or less) in anything but a carton or plastic bottle/cup. And that's just an example, many other items simply don't come in a non-packaged form, or it's lower quality when bought in bulk, even if it's cheaper. If it's cheaper and better I think it's a no-brainer that people would go for it.
> the farm I get most of my summer and fall vegetables from [...] how much more flavor they have than what stores sell
It's great if you have this option of buying from a farm but it's not a sustainable one for most. In the countries that could make the biggest difference with food packaging very few have no access to such a farm. And the supply of "wholesome, farm grown, bio" food is limited. Either the price would skyrocket due to the huge demand, or they would be less "wholesome" and more "supermarket".
It's the same as when you hear that "everybody should buy second had stuff because it helps the environment and it's cheaper". There's a bit of hidden paradox in there.
https://treadingmyownpath.com/2017/07/13/plastic-free-milk-y...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroWaste/comments/62kvzi/dairy_pro...
This being said I think using and reusing more durable packaging should be the way forward. Glass in particular is one type that can be reused instead of recycled. I grew up with glass bottles (unbranded 0.5l and 1l) being reused and you'd trade an empty one in to get a full one. Most of the liquid stuff we had around the house was stored in these identical glass bottles instead of 100 different sizes and shapes of bottles.
This is infeasible across the entire supply chain lifecycle. IMHO what is more realistic and feasible is putting an end to our packaging winding up in our landfills, and instead using energy maintaining durable and recyclable packaging. Accounting for the trillions spent on a military umbrella over oil regions and transport modes, the total energy and monetary cost switching to a zero-landfill packaging model would be a lower footprint.
I prefer glass containers with standardized composition, and ground glass joint stopper lids; for larger containers that cannot be held in a circular format that ground glass joints seem to require, I use glass rectangular containers with plastic lids (switching over to glass/stainless with silicone lids when my current containers break, as such options weren't available back when I originally purchased them).
The containers can be any shape, but as long as the type of glass is uniform, they are infinitely recyclable and cheap and easy to re-process (bonus if we use solar thermal-based processes to re-melt the broken glass). There is a one-time shipping cost to obtain the container that is much more expensive than throwaway-thin plastic containers, but it can be refilled endlessly until it breaks by accident; thick, removable neoprene skins can reduce breakage frequency by supplying a more non-slip surface to handle and offering some protection against minor bumps.
The supply chain reconfiguration is a bigger problem, though. Very few zero-waste stores have switched to receiving goods in Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBC). These are cost-efficient to transport because 18 standard 1000l IBC fit in a standard 20 ft. ISO container, and 2 special 820l IBC's can fit in the leftover space in that ISO container. Short of sending the goods in a dedicated ISO container (which only the largest distribution centers could afford to tie up capital in), it is the closest I can think of a large retail location being able to support, and even that is a stretch for some of the smaller stores.
Even so, very few manufacturers will distribute in IBC's. For example, I corresponded by email with Dr. Bronner's, and the largest size they will ship is a 5 gallon carboy they won't refill.
Then there are challenges with refill and re-supply, as well as ensuring the IBC's are made entirely of infinitely recyclable components. We can use stainless steel IBC's, but they're extraordinarily expensive. With many products, filling into customer-supplied containers raises sanitation challenges to resolve.
Another challenge I see is re-configuring the supply chain and consumer behavior will not lead to most of the savings passed onto consumers. That will stillborn any other similar environmentally-friendly but change-intensive infrastructure initiatives we badly need.
If we get to completely-automated fulfillment centers and delivery, then we might be able to solve the sanitation challenges with automated cleaning and disinfection (though that might take upwards of three hours with a cleaning process that follows prion-contamination protocols).
I'm starting at the consumer-end with glass containers and bulk products for now. I cringe when I see the bulk products come in throwaway plastic bags in usually-throwaway cardboard boxes. Baby steps first.
Obviously (and unfortunately) this is not available everywhere.
Sadly, they stopped doing that a number of years ago, and now just use the standard disposable plastic jugs.
She's one of my role models. Sorry I forget which videos cover dairy specifically, but I remember her talking about cheese and her secrets to get workers to put it in containers she brought. I think meat too.
How much time and money do you spend on growing these?
Part of my family participates in a local collective that buys local produce directly from producers in bulk, and in such a way they get cheap produce and can offer good prices to producers (because the middle-man is cut out). You might have something like that where you live.
The rural poor in the US still grow much of their own food. Even the not-so-poor. City dwellers need this super cheap, industrialized food, not the rest of us.
Another thing to consider is that tomatoes are seasonal. You won't have more than 3 months of natural homegrown tomatoes a year.
Is it worth it? IMHO, totally. Tomatoes are one of these products where homegrown is much better than the usual commercial varieties. But if all you want are good tomatoes, and don't enjoy the process, there are probably other, more economical ways of getting them.
No idea why my question made few people upset, since I’m not against homegrown things and only explained how it all doesn’t work locally and interested in economics of those for whom it works.
* blasphemy for US folks, I know, but pretty valid option to not have one in my downtown; everything is cheap to rent and very close to each other.
Here's a video of me making it (to manage expectations, I didn't make it to entertain, just to document): http://joshuaspodek.com/20-minute-vegetable-stew
If you're near Manhattan, contact me and invite yourself over. I host about 20 lunches and dinners a month, partly to share how to do it. I've also done corporate events, for example last Earth Day at Lululemon's flagship store on 5th Avenue.
https://www.treehugger.com/health/overeating-terrible-planet...
As for industrial food, and how it got to be, I strongly recommend this book by Aaron Bobrow-Strain https://www.amazon.com/White-Bread-Social-History-Store-Boug...
Guests have included titans of industry, famous authors, podcasters, a Nobel laureate, and many among my podcast guests.
I know a couple of successful restaurateurs in my area. It's an incredibly difficult business to be in. I would suggest that nobody opens a restaurant unless it's truly their love.
In reality could operate without any trash pickup translates to compostable waste is composted, non-compostable waste is recycled, other waste is donated. Recycle and compost. Which is great but not really "no leftovers". Is recycling paper worse than composting it? Recycling glass worse than reusing it?
> a dishwashing setup that converts salt into soap
I have to admit I don't understand this one. Converting salt into soap? Are they talking about actual saponification of fats from leftover food or something else?
Maybe offer free refill for customers really hungry (AFTER they're done with their initial serving).
Maybe it depends where one eats. I hear people saying this and I eat out all over the US and Europe and I guess I don't see this large and systematic difference in portion sizes that people claim--especially of the main/protein ingredient.
i honestly don't see how anyone can possibly see your suggestion as a sensible one. by the way, if you cut my portion size in half, you better cut the price in half too, otherwise i'm not coming back. i'm going to that NEW restaurant across the street who offers what you used to. i love big portions because i can bring leftovers home - i don't care that other people who cannot control their appetites finish the whole plate instead and get obese, that's their own problem not mine.
Nah, they just need to shave $1 off and call it tapas. :-)
I'm being mildly snarky. I like tapas for the variety. But, in part, because they mostly don't have the relative filler you have in a typical big dish main, they tend to be relatively pricey.
I'd take that every time -- even if I were charged the same as the full portion (since it doesn't matter in the end, as I'm throwing half of the full portion away anyhow.)
I could hit the local market. But that would mean sacrificing lunch hour to go shopping (market hours =biz hours)
Gonna try and make an effort this year anyway
For things that are relatively nonperishable (shelf life of a month or so), I do a single massive shopping trip every month. Then I have an entire month that I don't have to to that.
For the things that have a shorter shelf life (produce, dairy, etc.), I buy on an as-needed basis. This typically means I stop by a store every other day on my way home from work -- but since I'm just buying what I need for a day or two, that shopping trip is very brief.
I am seeing that more and more, and that's a good thing, but the odds are still good that I'll be served more food than most people can eat in a sitting, and I always feel bad when I see so much leftover food heading for the trash.
2k calories isn't even that much if you are a big, active man. And even if you aren't, as long as you don't eat that every meal, that's fine.
There is no reason to ban large servings, but what could be done is to make smaller, cheaper options mandatory, especially for products that can't be taken home easily (ex: ice cream).
I don't know. I don't do that, though. Mostly because if I'm eating out, it's usually a prelude to night doing other things -- and the last thing I want to do is have to cart around a bag of food.
Also, I used to routinely take leftovers home. It was a habit my parents had, and I just did it unquestioningly. Then one day I noticed that I rarely actually ate the leftovers (they tend to not be terrific the next day) and would throw them away anyhow.
and not sure how your food goes bad, if it's good in the restaurant... usually food doesn't go bad so quickly, but maybe you are one of those people who have some irrational aversion to leftovers (nothing wrong with that, my girlfriend is like that too) even though it's perfectly fine. right now i'm literally having reheated leftover pasta from a fine dining restaurant dinner last night, and i'm thoroughly enjoying it.
So people that go out to eat then go out and do other things that night before going home, unless it's the middle of winter and the car is basically a refrigerator itself, probably shouldn't bother bringing leftovers home with them.
https://www.thekitchn.com/how-long-can-you-leave-cooked-food...
I have the same issue when using home-cooked food as leftovers for lunch the next day. Cube steaks are rarely good warmed over (they dry out), rice ends up losing its stickiness (so it is a wet mess, or dried out crumbs). About the only thing that I can use for lunch the next day is some pasta based dishes, pizza (depending -- again, deep dish goes gross after a few hours), and manwich or tacos is good the next day (gotta keep the meat separated from everything else so it is easier to warm up in the microwave).
I prefer not to have the food stink up my car.
> not sure how your food goes bad, if it's good in the restaurant... usually food doesn't go bad so quickly,
It's not that it goes bad, it's that it's not as good reheated the next day as something that I could just cook up myself, so I'll cook.
This depends a lot on what the dish is, though. Some dishes are OK the next day, but most aren't.
> but maybe you are one of those people who have some irrational aversion to leftovers
No, I have no aversion to leftovers in general, but again, it depends a lot on what the dish is. When I cook at home, I arrange my meal plan so that I can use any leftovers from one meal as an ingredient in the next day's meal.
In any case, most of my restaurant eating is while I'm traveling so I'm mostly not able or not interested to do anything with leftovers.
Instead the problem being solved is packaging waste, and they solve it by putting the onus on their vendors (bakers, butchers, etc) to deliver in reusable containers.
Commendable, but isn't the larger problem the amount of food being wasted by kitchen across the country? Sure, they compost any left over food that can be processed, but that food could have fed hungry communities.